David Tennant and Catherine Tate revive the winning partnership that so delighted fans of Dr Who in a scintillating production of Much Ado About Nothing at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre. The duo are again time-travelling — to Gibraltar of the 1980s — and once more, as feuding couple-to-be Beatrice and Benedick, supplying the sort of sparky exchanges associated with their small-screen personas.

The feelgood factor could hardly be higher as the pair snarl and sneer in flights of wit only rarely achieved in Shakespeare’s later plays. That they are destined for each other’s arms — Benedick’s “I will be horribly in love with her” brings the house down — only adds to the fun. Tennant showed his gifts as a laughter-maker as long ago as 2000 in a memorable performance in the RSC’s Comedy of Errors. Now, before an audience composed, one supposes, largely of Dr Who fans, he has the crowd rooting for him from his first jaunty appearance at the controls of an electric golf buggy. There was added delight on Tuesday when he collided with the set, his vision distorted by an eye-patch following an operation earlier in the day.

The buggy is plastered with Union Flags, suggesting the euphoria that followed the Falklands War, which victory Benedick and his smartly uniformed navy chums are only too eager to celebrate. The heroine of the hour, Mrs Thatcher, puts in an appearance — in mask form — at one of the cheesy disco-sessions devised by director Josie Rourke and featuring spot-on period music newly composed by Michael Bruce.

Princess Di is there, too, and it is no surprise, surely, that her mask is worn by the lovely Hero (Sarah Macrae) soon to suffer so grievously from the machinations of Don John (Elliot Levey) and his evil sidekick Borachio (Alex Beckett). The scene in which she is cruelly rejected at the altar by her fiancé Claudio — presented in a fine professional debut by the charismatic Tom Bateman — maintains a power to shock despite all the frivolity that surrounds it.

Other first-class performances on view include those of Adam James as the good-sort prince, Don Pedro; Jonathan Coy as a Leonato vehement in his defence of traduced daughter Hero; and John Ramm who injects an element of Rambo into his hilarious portrait of the word-mangling police chief Dogberry.